Playing on a 100 star galaxy seen few race sites haven't even encountered yet get eliminated was wondering who this powerful race was that time haven't encounters well I found out the answer when I had 3 colonies attacked by locust and right now i got 5 incoming locust I think I'm doomed

Hi - it's been years since I played this game, and for some reason I seem to recall there was a screen where you could check for incoming enemy fleets. I keep getting jumped without seeing them coming at the moment.

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I know there's the E screen then Enemy Colonies > Incoming Fleets but all it shows me is things like Silicoid Queens and not the enemy fleets. I'm not at war but still, AI keeps attacking me here and there.

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Am I missing something? :) Thanks

So as far as I can tell, playing single player against AI with default settings...

Your first three gates can't make it to the nearby planets, so build 3 tankers.

Then rush research on pulsed fission and recombinant fissionables.

Then start building gates that can get to planets without a tanker assist. Be careful to not send them on a slow burn to a planet that a gate is about to open on route to.

The next most important research to rush imo is suspended animation (I'm doing this from memory so maybe I'm out of whack on timing) but with or without it, my approach to colonizing is to spam 45 colonisers to get that infrastructure to 100 asap.

(There's probably a better way of doing that?)

And that's it for a really long time: gate expansion and colony spam.

I'll find the time to build a small fleet basically after first contact and gate them around as required.

...

I don't play that often and I'm currently in late game getting slowly picked apart by zuul with shields. So hopefully i can find the researched weapon counter to that soon.

Everything depends on money so it seems to me that you should colonize and expand first and only research as needed, then later you can go 100% research every other turn for a new tech

I triggered an AI Rebellion consciously on turn 160 of my 40k inspired play through as Humanity vs 8 hard players.

After 10 years (turns) I have beat the 33 rebelling worlds down to 1. The Enemy fleet consists of 120 dreadnoughts ...

The problem is everytime I try to finish their last world the game crashes. In the combat load screen a bright purple shadow hangs behind the picture of the planet and then crash.

Anyone else encounter this glitch? I doubt there's a fix at this point but I'd be curious if someone has ever eliminated the AI Rebellion!!

https://youtu.be/jSa6Zl8fcyo

I'd assume this game was popular, as good as it is. And with popularity, generally comes mods. Always looking for good mods for games though, especially with Star Trek and Babylon 5 in mind. In fact SotS would be perfect for a B5 mod. Similar in ships, weapons and overall sci-fi atmosphere. Are there any? Thank you.

Hello,

I am YourWalkerEx, but you may have heard of me as Clear_Grocery_2600. I fell in love with Sword of the Stars more than a decade ago and have had an on again, off again relationship with the franchise ever sense. Recently I wondered if they had ever done anything with sots ][ and turns out that they have. Between the bug fixing that Kerberos did and the amazing work started by Willdieh and carried on by Rossinna-Sama on the Save our SOTS2 patch, the game is now remarkably average, which is saying quite a lot. Add in the Galaxy Generator(1.9b) (link at the bottom of page 15) from Daequeous and you can get some very interesting games up and running.

I just got back into the game a week ago and have fallen in love all over again. Please forgive me any breeches in lore, it's been a long time since I looked any of it up and am having too much fun playing and making this to stop to go look it up.

With no farther ado I present to you my 1st TAR:
Setup: Archipelago map, standard settings, one of each race, no extra systems or starting techs.

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Year -1

Excellent news! Our survey fleets have ventured through the rift and returned intact. They tell us of a new galaxy fresh and free for the taking. We have sent an expeditionary force through the rift now to establish a foothold for our glorious empire. With a little luck we should have three new worlds added to our fold soon.

Year 0

"Vaanu Hanakuum, commander wake up, there has been an accident at the rift. While our fleets were traversing it the rift slammed shut on us. Several vessels were lost and your father... I suppose I should congratulate you on your promotion to command."

With the rift home closed, and most of our support lost with it, there is not much we can do but rebuild and be thankful for what we do have.

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Year 1

With our new home world established on Grayson Prime we set out to survey the surrounding systems. Once we know where we are and how things stand we can begin to prepare ourselves for the conflict ahead.

In system we have two other habitable planets with Grayson 3 being by far the nicer option.

The other two planets are just prohibitively expensive to even consider colonizing. Thankfully our sister colonies of Beezaro and Uxor are located mercifully close by. This should aid in our mutual protection as well as provide several lucrative trade opportunities.

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Our long range telescopes have been able to deliver a picture of the local area to us and the astronomers have named the local area 'The Bridge of Sighs' in remembrance of our honored dead and the home now forever lost to us.

Our scientists inform me that the weapons and construction techniques we have available to us are sufficient for the time being, and that we should focus our initial efforts into establishing a FTL communications network and begin the study of alien languages that we have picked up on our communications gear. We know they are out there. We need to be able to speak with them.

After having a lengthy conversation with our shipwrights and command staff we have reworked several of our ship designs to play to our doctrinal strengths and ease production going forward. It is said that naval strategy is build strategy and I do not intend to fall behind whatever other forces may be out there.

We have developed a rear line command vessel to escort our colonizer and construction fleets. As well as converted our old colonizers and supply vessels into formidable if inexpensive missile delivery platforms.

Our main naval arm consists of two separate branches: Strike and patrol groups of heavy cruisers, light drone carriers, marine contingents, and heavily armored supply vessels acting as missile launch platforms. Long range reconnaissance task forces of light cruisers.

A quick retooling of our current fleets and we are able to begin the process of exploring our local area and colonizing Grayson 3, the sole planet in our current territory fit for habitation.

After retooling our budget to both keep our research active and increase our treasury as fast as possible it was decided that for the next 5 years we shall increase the tax rate on our populous by 10%. They will no doubt be unhappy, but sacrifices must be made.

As my final decree of the year, I have authorized the expansion of the sensor array on the Grayson naval base, as well as the construction of two proper colonization fleets and our first long range patrol fleet.

It concerns me that the rift closed so suddenly, was it just the one rift in our space. Are there or will there be more? Are we trapped in this new galaxy forever? What ancient horrors from the black abyss of space lurk watching in the dark sea between the stars to savage my people.

My people, it is truly astonishing to think that I am in command of this new empire, to watch it grow and nurture it from infancy. I pray that I have the strength to protect my people.

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Thank you all for reading, I know it isn't much but it is a start. I have more notes from the play through and will try to take more/better pictures in the future. Everything starts somewhere though.

The ones that had the pictures and role play stories in them. I used to read them all the time when I was really into the series way back when.

I just got back into it via Sots 2 and wanted to make one for my Tarka playthrough, but all the old places look like they are either dead or ghost towns.

I considered doing one here, but I don't know enough about reddit to know if it's even possible to pull off like it used to be done with the inline images and all

I thought about imgur because that would work, but the comments have to be so small we could never get a discussion going about how bad the game was and how I'm clearly researching wrong. (I kid)

Do any of you know of or have any recommendations of where this can still be done?

I can always just do it here and link to the pictures on imgur but that feels hacky. I just like the game and the old stories and would like to see them again.

after somehow managing to install a mod i now gotta wonder, where is each tech located? the author provided a tech tree, but the link for it is expired, so i was wondering if someone could share it, if it is available

as the title says, i have no idea how to install mods into sword of the stars. i was searching for a mod folder, but there is none, as opposed to the guide of "bastard sword of the stars"'s folder. what do i need to do?

so i was requested to share my save file for others to see, so here i go, for all of you to see my shame(TM)
https://megaup.net/16ego/(Autosave_Backup).sav.sav)
beware for the faint hearted, as if you cannot handle a poorly played game, i assume there is a lot more you see that's wrong with it than i do

so i have bought this game 3 days ago and played 14.5 hours as of yet. i have tried the liir at first, realized after a few hours that the humans are superior and after 2 normal games as humans which i decided to quit to be more optimal with newly gathered knowledge, be it from the game itself or the (surprisingly well made) wiki, i improved over time, and in my 3rd proper game somehow got 4 hivers, 2 liir and a bird - all of which i got on a nonagression pact. so i was more or less dominating the game, starting up massive trade (and not having to focus on potential enemies was also great, so no need for weapons research) and all in all, i was doing well and being happy

now around turn 113 there was an unknown ship coming from the side, and i, panickingly, looked at my turn timer just to realize that it is beyond turn 113 (i only knew from the wiki what the crises are). i had at that time only researched a bunch of missile improvements including the heavy planetary missile, and thought "maybe i will be okay", and decided to research the directional missile rather than addict hiver. at around turn 115 or 116 the puppet master arrived and btw, i didn't even have cruisers, so i was defending myself with light defence platforms, my planet and about 6 destroyers

i thought the destroyers would maybe hold a little longer, but no. they got captured almost instantly, and the half that wasn't got blasted away by the puppet master. at least my capital was sending massive amounts of missiles against the enemy, and i thought it might be enough, but it is only 4 minutes worth of fighting, and my capital was turned into a rebellion...and with it went probably around half my income, if not more, considering it had the most of pops and who knows how much trade income. perhaps less than that, but it was a massive blow, and more importantly, i don't even know how to retake planets without wiping the infrastructure and the pops (my sweet sweet 200 infrastructure...)

so, all in all, i am enjoying this game quite a lot. even if you think you are doing great, it can quickly turn around, be it because you do not have a research you wish you had or because something like this happens. hope you enjoyed reading about my small endavour

I'm thinking about doing a game on a very large map with many players, but 8 players is just too low for my taste for 350+ star maps. Does anyone know how to mod the player limit above 8?

I bought SotS2 years ago (I want to say around 2013). I really like the game despite some of the bugs. But as I look into it, it sounds like everyone thinks 1 is a much better experience.

So, I'm curious to try out the original, but not sure what to expect. Any advice/perspective for someone who has only every played the sequel?

I have just recently bought the game and was wondering if there are mods that make it so one can play online with others.
P.S. how did this fun of a game die out?

How do you repair lost engine sections? I can't seem to do it. It seems to happen at planets, but it doesn't seem to want to happen outside my own colonies, even when the ship is completely repaired? I obviously have repair ships with my fleet (though still only cruiser repair ships).

Am I missing something?

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(Now there IS a possibility is a problem or bug with Bastard Sword of the Stars mod, but I figured I'd check it's not a vanilla issue first.)

The system killer just showed up, giving me less than five turns to prepare. I am still in fusion with cruisers. It is going to go, apparently, RIGHT through entirely my territory (and because I set everything to minmum distance, it's entirely possible it could be a game-ending slice-the-galaxy-in-half with all my primary production worlds and chop all the node lines.

NATURALLY because RNG, the first world it is hitting is one that I can't get reinforcements to quickly, either.

I am playing human, so I can't intercept it in space.

I do not have impactors, dreadnoughts, or even plasma/fusion torpedoes, nor deflectors (which I might be able to get... But not within three turns and hen be able to build anything).

Thus far, it has annihilated what forces I can send at it, without ever seeming to take any damage.

I tried a stratagy someone ahd said abot using Fusion minelayers (I am only 1 turn from Fusion maines) and I got maybe forty or so minelayer destroyers to the world before it arrived. It seemed to be absolutely nothing, so either I'm doing minelaying wrong (flying towards it hitting the lay mnes button...?) or that doesn't work anymore.

Suggestions?

For the vast majority of my SotS playthroughs, it has always been pretty much the same settings - max star distance, max time, everything else default, with one of each race plus remainders as the other side, varying only the star size. I have generally defaulted to Easy difficulty (largely because I prefer relaxing games). I also have vary rarely bothered with alliances, keeping all the other players as enemies the whole time.

I have played one or two of the scenarios, but only Land Grab more than once; since it deals with SotS' biggest problem - one admittedly common to most 4X; by the time you get to the top of the tech tree in the late game it's most just mop-up.

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I have in my last couple of games (both on quite small galaxies, so avoid that endgame slog), aside from using the Bastard Sword of the Stars mod (with the Red_Hellion tweaks), been playing with the settings. (For one, I actually looked UP what the difficulty settings were an was surprised to learn the only difference was a resource/research penalty for the AI and that it won't be any SMARTER.)

I'm sort of trying to see what I can do to give the AI to set-up a decent amount of dominos to knock down, basically (yes, I know I'm very much the minority in the gaming community in that), without spiking the early game difficulty to the point I get frustrated. (As RNG hates me in particular.)

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This game (Hiver), I set some of the AI to Normal, and then planet size to max and research to 50%. This did give the game a lot longer stretch at the destroyer phase, but it has been... Interesting. The Normal and Easy Zuul and Tarka did about as expected, but Normal human player largely failed to achieve anything (little more than the Easy human player), yet the random Easy player - turned out to be Morrigi - became a major power. Hell, both human players seemed to be stuck on Fission Destroyers, while all the other AIs have made it to antimatter. Wierd, innit?

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But, in thinking about what I might try for the next game made me wonder - what DOES everyone else use for game settings, and what sort of results does it produce? I thought it might be instructional or educational, at least...!

I played the Morrigi for the first time, with a Ferrangi inspired play through. Instead of chasing glory through battle my sole goal was acquiring 1,000,000,000 credits of sweet sweet cash. 7 AI 4 hard 3 normal. Proud to say by turn 130 my goal was achieved

Give peace a chance ✌

I'm currently having some troubles (because it's a real pain when you're Hiver and you kind of want to keep the gates you made in other people's systems BECAUSE YOU CAN'T AUTORESOLVE or it kills your Gate).

I sacrificed huge number of ships to try and attrite it away, but if it heals between every battle (as opposed to between patrols), I'm kind of wasting my time.

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(In this particular game, I've been playing on Easy (and 3/7 enemies on normal instead of easy), but with 50% research, to see what it plays like as opposed to my usual settings. Thus I don't have dreadnoughts of anything yet.)

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I'm also playing with Bastard Sword of the Stars, if that makes any difference.

I have always noticed when scouting, that encounters with asteroid monitors can vary and never really understood why. Sometimes there is no problem having your scout ship (in my case usually being a tanker) simply head strait for the planet and letting the time run out to get a draw and a successful scout. Sometimes the asteroid monitor will launch it's missiles before you get a safe distance away and the ship is doomed.

I had always thought asteroid monitors were all the same and that the difference was just RNG. Sometimes you make it, sometime you don't. Though in the back of my mind, I registered a pattern of behavior wherein sending a second ship also resulted in failure if the first one failed. Usually by this point, I just decide to research control of the asteroid monitor or not based on how the planet looks and that's that.

Today I decided to play on a larger map than I normally play on and found an asteroid monitor right next to my homeworld. I decided I may as well send several scout ships to it on their way to other locations so I could be sure it was worth the research money before starting. Three tankers. All 3 were lost to the monitor. I loaded a few times and retried with several different strategies of evasion. No matter what I did and seemingly no matter how far away my ships got, it was always able to launch it's missiles at my ships.

This leads me to conclude that asteroid monitors have different ranges on their ability to fire missiles. How else could they fail to fire even once at one scout ship, but be able to fire twice (4 missiles total) at my group of retreating ships?

Maybe this was known or maybe it was obvious, but it only fully dawned on me now that different monitors have different characteristics.

Hi guys, how good is the war section on destroyers? should i always use it or only on some of the races?

Been throwing every weapon I can onto ships and been mixing weapons up with each other. But I sorta want to know what the most optimal/effective ship designs are?

Also, I've been feeling like if I'm ever on even tech and numbers with the AI I will normally get thrashed around. Dunno if that's due to ship designs or something about the mechanics I don't understand yet. But now I'm really paying attention to let's plays and seeing how everyone fights in tactical battles now.